


i'll go by you

by from



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Best Friends, Bisexual Character, Christmas, Friends With Benefits, Friendship/Love, M/M, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Zayn One Direction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 02:45:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5566603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-hiatus, 2015. Harry can feel it. Soon there won't be any more Harry and Niall, not like <i>that</i>. Especially not with Selena in the picture. Niall thinks Harry might change his mind. Harry knows he bloody well won't. Somehow he ends up inviting Niall over for Christmas anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll go by you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forthemoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthemoon/gifts).



> i hope you enjoy this fic. thank you for the prompt. happy holidays! 
> 
> thank you to my beta Vicki / [foureyedniall](http://foureyedniall.tumblr.com/) and the buds who cheered me on, especially [nuthinbutniall](http://nuthinbutniall.tumblr.com/) and [heauxnarry](http://heauxnarry.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> this fictional work is set in the canon universe. as for specific events, consider the cut-off point to be the txf finale after party. :)

The morning is bright but the sun is taking its time to come up. When Harry closes his eyes, the sleeves of his t-shirt feel stupidly short, like he’s put himself out here but the sun won’t reach. Bloody November. He pulls his arms back through the holes, careful with his coffee. Much better, he thinks, and leans back into the chair again. But when he goes for a sip from his mug, his shirt gets pulled up to his elbows and now his tummy’s cold. 

He’s drawing breath for a curse when he hears: “Maybe bring the mug up through the neck hole.” 

Niall is standing where the path around the pool leading up to the side gate gives way to the path back to the main house, his shoulder trembling with the giggles, the lenses of his glasses reflecting wildly.

“I hate you,” Harry says.

“No you don’t.”

“Ow!” The coffee has been cooling off, but it still burns a little, sloshing onto his chest. 

“You’re an idiot,” Niall says, coming to him. 

Harry puts the mug down on one of the small teak benches he uses instead of tables around the pool. “It didn’t work.” He takes his t-shirt off and mops his torso with it. 

“Your head’s too fat,” Niall says. He zips his jacket off and hands it over. “Here.”

“My body’s saying let’s go but my heart’s saying no,” Harry quotes tersely. The jacket smells of Niall, but there’s a trail of perfume and hairspray on one sleeve. Harry keeps it on anyway. It’s already warm from Niall wearing it.

“Your head’s too fat for a bottle.”

“It’s a magic bottle, Niall,” Harry says, slowly drinking what’s left of the coffee. “And I’d be a magic genie.” 

Niall sits at the foot of the cabana chair, rubs his eyes under the glasses. His face looks a little rough.

The guesthouse has its own entry system but Harry thinks if Niall had come home last night from Selena’s, he’d have come up to the main house. Harry was up late downstairs, fucking around on the piano. “Did you just get back?” 

“Yeah.”

“Good night?”

“Yep,” Niall says.

For all that Niall goes on about how hot this person or that person is, he’s always tight-lipped about the one he’s getting off with. It’s one of the reasons why Harry hasn’t gone back on this thing that started between them last year. He knows Niall won’t tell a soul, won’t make work and the band any more complicated than they already are. Sometimes, though, Harry wishes Niall would tell him a little bit more about the others. Just so it’s easier for Harry to figure out when it’s okay to want things and when he should stay away.

His hand goes to the top of his head for his sunglasses before he remembers they’re probably on the ground somewhere. “Everything still nice?” There are a couple of moonflowers by the chair, scentless now that the night’s over, but no sunglasses.

He can feel Niall’s hand landing softly on his ankle. “I think so.”

“D’you think you’re properly dating now?”

“No clue.” Niall is cradling Harry’s heel in his palm, rubbing up and down with his whole hand, a bit like the way the massage therapist on tour used to do Harry’s legs after back-to-back shows. “Haven’t talked about it.”

His next question should be about the two of them, about whether they’re done for now, and maybe for good if Niall and Selena keep it up over break, make a long-term go of it like Lou and El did for years and years. There’s nothing stopping them. No tour to whisk Niall away, none of Niall turning to Harry for a bit more when he needs it and Harry turning to him for the same. No more Harry and Niall, not like that. And maybe not like this either, Niall’s hand so sure and familiar on his body. 

He hugs the empty mug to his chest, watches the sky over the top of Niall’s head, waits for the sun.

#

His voice is shit again because of his cold. It’s his own fault. He can never resist a baby, not even a snotty one. They’ve closed Hollywood Boulevard just for the show and he’s not up for it.

Niall catches his eye and walks over. “Is this warm?” he asks, stroking the shearling vest, right over where Harry’s heart is beating a little too fast.

“Mm,” Harry replies. 

Niall’s hand is on his waist, swinging him round, back to the centre of the stage. His shoulder feels solid underneath Harry’s arm. “You should wear this tonight instead of that silk stuff.”

“Doesn’t go,” Harry says, and sees Cal coming up with his camera to grab a couple of shots. “'Sides, I have you to keep me warm.”

Niall grins. “What would you do without me ...” The minutest frown crosses his face and he breaks away. “Sorry. Some people are goin’ well mad over there.”

Harry shrugs, but he knows the screaming has bothered Niall. “Harry found the perfect tie, for the AMAs. It’s gonna pick up the greys in the flowers,” Harry tells him. “Show you the photo later.”

“Your one or my one?”

“Yours. I’m not wearing a tie.”

“Oh, you’re not?” Niall says. He squints a little. “You’re talking about Harry Lambert, yeah, not about yourself?”

Harry hates how the jokes about him talking about himself in the third person are back in rotation. If Harry (the one who’s not him) wasn’t such a good fit as a stylist, he wouldn’t have risked having the piss taken out of him all over again. “That was four years ago! And just the one time. In my sleep!” 

Niall shushes him. “Voice rest, Harry. No talking.”

#

Half of Bobby’s forehead is missing from the screen, but after years of seeing only an ear or a chin, it’s definitely an improvement. “Is Niall being a good houseguest?” he asks.

“'Course I am,” Niall shouts from the kitchen. 

“Uhm,” Harry says, pretending to hesitate. Niall is making slit-your-throat motions at him. Harry laughs and admits, “No. He is, Bob.”

Bobby smiles. “Are you sure? Is he helping you with the dishes, Harry?”

“Da. Come on,” Niall says, coming back with a big glass of orange juice from the pitcher Harry made earlier. 

“Yep, he is,” Harry says. There are two dishwashers, one in the main house and one in the guesthouse, so it’s true.

“You’re very good to him, letting him stay with you all this time he’s out in LA.”

“Niall is welcome any time, Bob,” Harry says, his cheeks warming. “So are you, you know.”

Bobby laughs. “Thank you, son. I don’t know when that’ll be, but you talk to your da and maybe we’ll have a reunion out there. Make it a golf trip.”

Harry looks up at Niall and he knows he’s got the same sceptical smile on his own face. Still, it’s nice to think about. 

He leaves Niall to have a conversation alone with his father in the living room and goes for a wee. 

When he gets out of the downstairs loo, they’re already finishing up with the usual messages Niall wants Bobby to give to other people back home. Harry plants his face on Niall’s shoulder so the camera on the iPad will catch him. “Bye, Bobby. I miss you,” he says, waving in front of Niall’s face. 

Niall bats at his hand. “Get off, Harry. I’m tryin’ to say goodbye to my da here.” 

Harry pokes him back and goes upstairs to put a shirt on, the clock in the kitchen telling him he’s got people coming in a few minutes.

He’s checking the internet and Niall is doing pull-offs on the guitar when Jeff, Glenne, and Xander arrive. Niall says hi to everyone and gives Glenne a kiss on the cheek, but Harry can tell he just wants to sit with the guitar for a bit more. 

Harry asks the three of them what they’ve got up to and he sits listening to Jeff and Xander talk about their mornings while Glenne forages by the stove.

“What have you been doing, other than eating Niall’s cooking?” Glenne asks. “This womelette is delicious, Niall,” she calls out, picking up another bite from the leftovers in the pan. “It’s usually so rubbery without the yolk.”

“Thank you,” Niall says. “'S all yours.”

“Made juice. Pitcher’s in the fridge if anyone wants some,” Harry says. 

“Why didn’t you say?” Glenne goes to the cupboard with the glasses. “Anyone else wants some?”

“Skyped with the father-in-law.” Harry continues.

Niall laughs the laugh that’s more like a titter, a habit he picked up when he had his braces. It kept the rest of his mouth from having to move so he didn’t have to be in more pain.

“Um,” Harry tries to think. They’ve been up for ages. “I don’t know. Went online,” he says. He pulls up the Instagram account of a model he was looking at earlier. “What d’you think?” He passes his phone to Xander. “She’s pretty hot.”

Jeff wanders away to sit with Niall, asking him if he’s ever thought of sessioning just for the hell of it because Jeff knows some people Niall might want to do that with, if Niall is going to spend time in LA over their break. 

Glenne pours herself a short glass of juice and sits by the island, picking through the fruit bowl.

#

They’ve won _Artist of the Year_ again. Louis and Liam are doing the speeches, all very professional even though just a few minutes ago Liam was laughing so hard about Louis and Niall being locked out he almost threw up. Niall is across the podium from Harry, which is not great because they sort of have to face each other and Niall has that look in his eyes, the kind that tells Harry he wants to remember everything and he doesn’t know if he can. If Harry gets him in bed, Niall will run his mouth, about what his brain’s thinking, about what’s underneath his fingers and spread under his palms, about what Harry feels like twisted up under him. _I want you to remember it with me,_ he said the first time it happened, when Harry was so turned on he didn’t want to admit he might not be much help later with the remembering.

Harry wonders if it’s all right to take Niall home after this and have Niall to himself, just for tonight. He doesn’t think Niall’s had that talk with Selena yet.

“We have to go to Bieber’s after-party,” Niall reminds him backstage, an arm’s length away.

But Niall still has that look in his eyes. So Harry’s not really pleading when he says, “Come up when you get back.”

“Yeah.” Niall licks his lips. “I know.” 

Harry wakes up the next morning, Niall a pale line of shoulder on the other side of the bed, and hopes they never forget, not even after Niall’s moved on. There’s making notes, he thinks, and then there’s keeping them.

#

The stadium almost feels overwhelming now that they haven’t been doing them all year long and there isn’t the luxury of the stage or lighting rig being set up exactly to their specs. He can hear the incredible crowd, though, and when they do the huddle to Ricky Martin, he knows his grin is as wide as Niall’s.

There are sixty-five thousand and three people singing along with him. 

He wants to stay at the edge of that rush, floating on the thrum of the stage, the music and their harmonies, breathing in the night air, the smell of sweat, fresh paint hot under the lights. 

There’s no other feeling like it.

And when he spots a cardboard of Zayn’s face, something gets loose from somewhere inside, blindsiding him. 

He kicks it away and turns to Louis, shouting, “Don’t they know he left?” 

Louis exhales. “Go ahead, mate.”

Harry kicks the piece of cardboard off the stage.

Zayn left, he says to himself. _Telehit_ is their last stadium show and Zayn didn’t want to be around for it. His face shouldn’t get to stay.

But after yoga and a long bath, and Niall dropping by to snap at him about a missing yoghurt pot when Niall knows he’s off dairy right now, Harry starts to feel a bit guilty. He finds Louis sitting on the sofa in Liam’s hotel room and Liam cross-legged on an armchair in the same corner as Louis. The widescreen telly is on some sporting channel with match results scrolling down one side of it, but they’re both on their phones.

“I shouldn’t have kicked it off the stage,” Harry says straight after the hellos, knowing they’ll both understand what he’s talking about since Liam was telling him off in the car back from the stadium. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, well,” Liam sighs, “the footage is probably already all over the internet so there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Harry sits himself on the arm of the sofa away from the both of them. “That’s not what I’m sorry about.”

“Isn’t it?” Louis grins, looking up at him.

Liam chuckles into his phone but Harry knows Liam is chuckling at him.

“Shut up,” Harry says.

Louis settles back and shrugs. “He always thought your strops were hilarious.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you know?”

“He never said.”

“Why would he?” Louis says. “Doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

It’s true, Harry supposes. Zayn was never a prick to be a prick.

“You, on the other hand …” Liam says to Louis. 

Louis puts his phone down. “Why do you always do that?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“Compare people like that.”

Like Niall, Harry prides himself on always knowing when to get out of the way and give people the space they need. It’s why he and Zayn never argued and why he never got caught up in Louis and Liam’s little spats when they first got started. The sharpness in Louis’ voice was always a dead giveaway. Either he missed it or there’s more he hasn’t been paying attention to.

“Just 'cause you’re coming off worse in the comparison—”

“No, no,” Louis’ voice rises over Liam’s and Harry gets up from the arm of the sofa. “That’s not—” Louis stops himself. “You know what, let’s just leave it.”

Liam tucks his phone away. “It’s not about him being better than you, Lou. All I said was …” There's pellets flying everywhere. Liam is shrieking about good peanuts. Harry ducks but not before he takes one just under his eye. 

"What the fuck is going on?" He moans, crouched behind the sofa, but no one bothers to answer. There's just peanuts falling on him now and again. Unsalted. Liam brought down a jumbo bag of those from the States so he and Louis will probably be a while at it. Harry crawls to the door and gets the fuck out.

He’s fallen asleep in Niall’s room when Niall comes back from drinks with Josh and them. He gets on one elbow and wants to say something important, but all he can think about is the feeling of his lopsided bun and what’s left of the sting from the peanut missile. Niall pulls all four of Harry's socks off, then his trousers and t-shirt, telling him all the while about going down to a bar in Condesa, walking the streets and seeing some of the Art Deco buildings lit up for the holidays. Harry sits up at the edge of the bed to undo the buttons on Niall’s shirt, puts his head on Niall’s tum, and holds him tight.

“You all right?” Niall laughs, not undressing anymore. “Heard there were some casualties from the peanut fight tonight.”

"Remember that night in Jo'burg when you found Zayn's tour pass in one of your guitar cases?" 

Zayn and Louis treated their tour passes like talismans, not like him or Liam, who kept losing theirs all over the place. Zayn would’ve held on to his pass if in his mind there’d been a chance he’d come back. It broke Harry’s heart seeing the look on Niall's face, the red and white of his fist around the lanyard. 

“You’re mumbling into me, Harry,” Niall says.

Harry looks up, resting his chin on Niall’s stomach, and repeats the question.

Niall rubs Harry’s temples with his thumbs. “Won’t forget that for a long time.”

“You weren’t angry, though.”

“Didn’t have time to be angry, did I? Was too busy trying to learn all the new vocals.”

“He should’ve said something.”

Niall runs a hand along the top of his head and through his hair. He can feel the bun coming loose entirely. “Easy to say, hard to do,” Niall says.

“People should say something,” Harry insists. “My dad did, when he was leaving us.”

“But you’re still angry with him sometimes,” Niall says. Harry stills and Niall caresses Harry’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Sorry. I’ve had a few. I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

“'S fine. You’re not wrong, are you?” he says, helping Niall get his shirt off, letting Niall hold on to him when he gets rid of his shoes. 

Harry collapses back down onto the mattress when Niall goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth and lies there listening to the wet sounds Niall’s mouth is making, to the stream of piss hitting the bowl a little later, and Niall washing his hands while the toilet flushes and the tank refills in gurgles.

When Niall comes back out, he’s only in his pants. “Thought you’d be under the covers by now,” he says.

Harry twists around and crawls up to the pillows, Niall pulling the covers open from under his calves. Niall thumps the pillows together the way he likes them and gets in after Harry. 

They both kick at the sheets to untuck them and end up getting each other on the shins. Niall rolls over to protect his knees and Harry stops kicking so Niall will roll back to the centre of the bed, but Harry gets him with tickles and it turns into a bit of a fight. They’re laughing and screaming until they’re hoarse, but it’s okay. There’s only one room next door and it’s empty cos it’s Harry’s. 

“Go to sleep,” Niall says, breathless, arms crossed and hands up still to protect his pits. 

Harry doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to close his eyes. He doesn’t know how long he’ll get to do this, how many more nights of bunking together they’ll have. 

Niall grabs his phone from the nightstand and then he’s on it for ages, texting his family and Selena. 

Harry watches, one hand on the band of Niall’s underpants, his fingers hooked under it, keeping safe the candy button freckles on Niall’s hip.

#

“Don’t know how I’d be doing anything if I had to get that tattoo. At least dinner is still on tonight,” Niall says to him when they’re leaving Television City after the _Late Late_ taping. Any of them would’ve taken the tat for Niall anyway if he’d been the one with the ‘tattoo’ box instead of Harry, but maybe Niall wouldn’t have let them. “You doin’ okay?” Niall asks. “If you’re stayin’ in, you should eat with us.”

He always asks, Harry thinks. Always wants to know. Because they matter to each other, don’t they? Always.

Harry shrugs and says he’s doing fine. After his nap, it’s even true. He bathes and goes to dinner with Jeff and Glenne, his left arm smarting a bit. They go for sushi so he only has to move his right to eat.

He’s upstairs afterwards fetching a book for Glenne by the light someone left on over his bed, his windows latched open to the dark shimmer of the pool and evergreen vines, and he can hear people in the guesthouse across the garden playing at talking Spanish with each other.

The guesthouse is lit up from one end to the other, like maybe Niall and Selena had a proper dinner party with all her friends. If he stands perfectly still, he probably only has to wait a bit before he hears the clink of plates and glasses going into the dishwasher. 

He takes the book from the shelf at the bottom of the nightstand, goes back downstairs, two steps at a time.

“Harry, are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Glenne asks, tucking the book under her arm. “It’s so close and there’s a band up from San Diego.”

In the reflection off the sliding doors, he can see Jeff with a fat glass of iced water as if he’s been watching himself drink in a mirror. Jeff hasn’t bothered taking his jacket off even though he’s been complaining about it being too warm since they left the restaurant. _I'm not taking off my jacket for a stopover,_ he’d probably say if Harry made fun of him for it.

Harry shakes his head. “No. I think I had too much to eat at dinner,” he says. “Just wanna have a quiet night in.”

“Why don’t we walk out the back way, see if those guys want to come instead?” Jeff says to Glenne. Harry knows Jeff is gesturing at the guesthouse with the dregs of his glass, but it looks like he’s toasting himself. He turns to Harry and adds, “We’ll get 'em out of your hair, bud.”

Harry shrugs. “I’m not bothered,” he says, going to sit on the long grey chesterfield with red buttons and piping, the one nod to London in the open living space downstairs. “'S what the guesthouse is for.” 

He hears a door being slid open and feels a gentle pat on his shoulder. “'Night, sweetheart,” Glenne says. “Please refrain from texting me the ending.”

“Later, Harry,” Jeff says, his voice already far away.

Harry pulls one of the mohair blankets over his lap and picks up the notebook he left on the coffee table ottoman earlier. There’s some doodling he did after his nap, and the scribble _too early too late when you hurry but it’s fate_ , smudged from the steam in the bath. It doesn’t make sense, but it might someday. Taylor taught him that.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he hears the door again.

It’s Niall. He smells like roast and Harry suddenly wonders if his mum will do a goose this Christmas.

“Hey,” Harry says.

Niall kisses his forehead when he passes by the back of the chesterfield and Harry’s eyes flutter shut. He quickly opens them again and makes himself stare at the gas fireplace. Niall picks up an acoustic from one of the stands and sits down in the mid-century leather armchair Harry bought in the summer from a dealer downtown.

“Did she go with Jeff and Glenne?”

“No,” Niall says, playing chords Harry doesn’t recognise until he changes keys and starts to mirror the piano in _Olivia_. “Early start tomorrow.”

Harry goes back to his notebook, jots down what he can remember of writing the song and when he brought it to Julian and the others. 

When he looks up again, stopping because he wants to ask Niall if he’s right about how they divvied up the verses, Niall is still strumming but he’s also watching him. Niall looks like he’s been watching him for a while.

“What?” Harry asks, not sure if he wants to know.

Niall stops playing, his right hand slipping down to cradle the guitar, the strings buzzing down to nothing. “Had a chat with Selena earlier. We’re maybe going to go out tomorrow night. It’s getting to be a little boring just staying in all the time,” he says. “We were talking about that tonight. I think we’re ready. See how it goes.” 

“That’s nice,” Harry says. Because it is. It’s always nice when the person you like commits themselves to being thrown to the wolves because they like you back enough to think you’re worth the trouble. Harry always feels loved when that happens. Niall probably feels loved now. And that’s it, Harry thinks. They’ve had a last hurrah, spooned up together on his bed last night after falling asleep to _Horrible Histories_ downstairs when they got back from San Jose, and Harry didn’t even know it. “’M happy for you, Niall.”

“Harry,” Niall starts, and his noon sky eyes are so earnest they’re making Harry feel his dinner again. “It doesn’t have to change anything.”

“If you think you’re not quoting a video game, you’re wrong,” Harry says. He puts his notebook away, but over the blanket so he knows where to start looking for it later. 

“I told her. About us.”

“What?” It’s not fair that Niall is the one with something to hug, but it’s probably just as well because Harry thinks he could break whatever he tries to hold in his hands. “Why?” 

“It’s her right to know.”

“That we hook up sometimes?”

Niall looks at the ottoman and lays the guitar down on it. “I didn’t put it like that, but yeah, I told her about us.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t know if we’re going to stop.” 

Harry doesn’t know what planet Niall thinks they’re living on now. They always stopped or were already stopped whenever they started proper things with other people. Nadine. Whatshername in Australia. “But we will. We always do,” he says. “We’re stopping now, aren’t we?”

“I told her at the start, Harry,” Niall says. 

Harry wonders if the start means October. Niall and Selena weren’t sleeping together before the Roundhouse gig.

“How long has she known?” He sniffs and puts his hair up to keep his hands busy. “If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have—”

“She said we don’t have to. She said she’s fine with it.”

He laughs. “Fuck off, no she didn’t.”

“No. 'S what she said,” Niall tells him.

“Yeah. I’ve heard that before,” Harry says. “It never works, though, does it? Someone always—People always pair off.” 

Niall shakes his head. “She knows about us.”

“Okay,” is all Harry can say because he has no idea what Niall is saying. He and Niall aren’t together. There’s no reason for Selena to have to know about them, for her to have to be fine with anything.

“She knows about us,” Niall repeats. And when Harry says nothing to that, he says: “About me and you.”

Harry always wants to correct Niall when Niall says _me and you_ and he should be saying _you and I_ , but Niall’s not wrong now and Harry still wants to correct him. There’s no _me and you_ anymore, not like how Harry thought there was. 

“I’m not trying to have everything,” Niall chuckles, his voice thin, “but maybe it sounds like I am. Maybe—I don’t know, Harry. I’m just letting you know, she’s fine with how it is.” He raises a hand to his mouth and draws it back down again, traps it in his lap with the other one. “So, what do you think?”

“Fuck if I know, Niall,” Harry says. “It’s a lot to think about. I mean, why didn’t you ask me before you told her? I mean …” He doesn’t really want to say any more. He doesn’t like the way his voice sounds. “You know what, it's pretty late. It’s late and it’s been a long day,” he lifts his left arm up, the one with the new tattoo on it.

“It’s late late,” Niall says, getting up. He’s smiling but he looks lost.

“That’s my joke. I’m the one who had to get the tattoo.”

“Well, you should’ve made the joke then,” Niall says. “Need anything before I go?”

“I’m not an invalid, Niall.”

“You’re all tucked up like you are,” he says. He bends down and gives Harry’s forehead another kiss, too quick for Harry to do anything about. “Goodnight, idiot.”

“Goodnight, arse.” 

Niall leaves and Harry grabs another blanket from the pile by his feet, wraps himself up tight, the way Nick does up his dogs in their thundershirts on Bonfire Night.

#

“Hi, Harry.”

“Hey.” He wipes his mouth with the paper napkin and gets up, his chair wobbling back.

He wasn’t dreading the next time he’d see her, but only because he didn’t know he wouldn’t have a say about it. Now that she’s standing in front of him in artists’ catering at Wembley of all places, Harry doesn't want to think of her as the Selena who maybe doesn’t mind if the guy she’s seeing (or is Niall now her boyfriend? her _man_?) is sleeping with him too. He'd feel small with that person there, like maybe she knows more than he does, can see things in ways he can't.

“You alright?” He asks, giving her a peck on the cheek.

“I’m great. How are you?”

“Good,” he says, acknowledging the bloke in the Wembley staff shirt who is hovering a short distance away. He must’ve been the one who brought her back here. “Want some soup?” Harry gestures at his bowl.

“No, thanks,” she says with a small shake of the head, her hair bouncing softly with it.

It’s been ten days since Niall told him about what’s been going on without him knowing. Ten days and Harry still has no answers. He’s had a lot of fun with Niall at all the interviews and shows. More fun than usual. Maybe it’s them saying goodbye in the best way possible. “Good flight?”

“Yeah.”

“Great.” He sees Liam walk in, still in his street clothes and heading straight for the salad bar. He clears his throat. “Thank you for coming. We started on the show so it’s a big thing for us obviously. It’s always nice when people we know come and support us. It means a lot, especially tonight.” He adds, “Niall’s in with Lou getting his hair done last I saw him, but if you go to our dressing room, he’ll probably be back there soon.”

Her eyes have grown comically wide through his speechifying and it looks like she wants to say something, but she stops herself and smiles instead, and that’s that. 

Harry pulls his seat in and sits back down when she goes away with the Wembley bloke. He watches her take photos with a couple of people, contestants’ family probably, and picks a carrot out of his soup to chew. 

There’s laughter and he lifts his head to see Liam hugging her with one arm, his other hand laden with a bowl of salad with some meat on top. 

She’s Liam’s type too, Harry thinks, and wishes he’s not thinking it. 

Liam sits down across the table and looks at him for a moment. “So, are they on, then?” he asks with a quick tilt of his head toward the door Selena just took out the room.

Harry goes back to his soup.

“Well?” 

Harry doesn’t understand why Liam still expects a response when he’s saying things people obviously don’t want to hear. Since tour ended, which was ages and ages ago, Liam’s been complaining about his dog going into whatever room he’s in whenever it needs to fart, but he still hasn’t learned anything from it.

“I don’t know, Liam. Why don’t go you ask Niall?” 

“Alright, mate. No need to bite me head off,” Liam says easily. “It’s just crazy, like. He’s had a crush on her since like, we were here. In the competition. That was ages ago, and I don’t just mean like, years ago. D’you know what I mean?” He swallows a mouthful of greens, the crunch like a wall between them. “Now she’s here for him when we’re like, here, saying goodbye to all this, after. After the competition, and let’s face it, losing. After the records and the tours, making it big everywhere, all the amazing shit we’ve done,” Liam continues, brown puppy eyes bright, and Harry sees him again as sixteen, floppy-haired and eager, having just one big wish and working so hard for it to come true. “I mean, every year we’re back here, but this is like, the end. Like, it’s a proper goodbye. After everything.”

Harry smiles at the mess of words, salad, and emotions. “It’s not _after_ until we’re done saying goodbye.”

“Ooh. Nice,” Liam laughs.

Harry toasts him with a spoonful of soup. Liam gamely toasts him back with a lump of salmon poking through the tines of his fork.

After the finale, the champagne is flowing even before they leave the stadium. Someone makes a speech on a dressing room table and they all raise their plastic cups. Liam is laughing and Harry knows exactly what he’s seeing.

#

“He said he told you that I know.”

Harry looks around the hotel bar, sees there's no one too close, and relaxes the grip he has on the stem of his glass. At least she knows how to pick her moments, he thinks. “Yeah,” he says. “But Selena, look, that’s over now.”

She laughs. “That’s bullshit, Harry.”

He furrows his eyebrow, but only for effect because it feels like they’re being pally about all this and he’s a competitive bloke. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No, but you did just tell me a lie and I need you to be honest.” 

He’s thinking hard about the push she’s making and all he can think of is the show they put on tonight on the X-Factor stage, of him and Niall singing together, the lyrics feeling right for the start of break. “You know,” he sniffs, “what you saw up there, that’s about the band. That’s us in the band together. It’s a big thing for us, for all of us,” and Liam put it best so he adds, “after everything.”

“That’s not what I was talking about. You’re totally derailing. If we’re going to do this, we have to be honest with each other,” she says, clearly not about to let it go.

Fuck. He sips his champagne cocktail and glances over her head again. The after-party is in full swing and there’s no one looking particularly interested in the conversation he’s having with her. “Do what exactly?” 

She stands straighter and with the heels, her forehead is close enough for him to kiss, but if she wants his blessing, he’d rather use his drink. “I don’t need him to choose, Harry. Do you get what I’m trying to say?”

“Yeah,” he says, and because it didn’t come out sounding real, he adds: “Yeah. I do.”

“If you feel the same,” she continues, smiling now, “if this works for all of us, if there’s no drama, then I’m good.”

Harry wonders if the hiatus is going to be a series of crazy moments like this, just how it was when they first started and everything that happened was new and bizarre to them. “This is really weird,” he finally says to her. “I can’t believe I’m stood here having this conversation right now.” She frowns and he has to ask, “Why are you so okay with this?”

“I don’t want to be everything to someone,” she tells him, the words heavy as a book. “That’s not the kind of relationship I want.”

Harry thinks she must not know Niall all that well. Not yet. “Niall wouldn’t like, expect that from you.”

“No, because he already has you.”

“And other people,” he tells her. “His family. His friends. He’s got loads of them.”

“Boy, you English. You’re real good at that,” she says with another laugh. “You know what I meant.”

“The English are good at what?” Niall asks, coming up from behind a passing waiter.

“Hey babe,” she says, turning to Niall, the light above them hitting her bare shoulder. She looks like she belongs in the gilded picture frames on the restaurant wall upstairs. “Just telling Harry the English are really good at not talking about their feelings,” she explains, and Harry hears something in her voice that wasn’t there before. She really cares about Niall, Harry realises.

Niall looks at him and then back at her. “You Americans,” he finally says.

“Yeah, good one, Niall. Solid return,” Harry says, shaking his head. 

Selena tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles at Niall.

“I dunno,” Niall shrugs. “’S not just the English, is it?”

Harry bumps Niall’s back as he slips out of his spot, pushing Niall into Selena, and walks off to find the Sony exec he’s meant to talk to tonight.

He comes out the first-floor loo later and sees them in the service corridor, the deep green of her dress like water Niall’s fingers are disappearing in. She leans into him, her hair brushing his shoulder. They’re both holding on like they have a thousand stories to tell each other. 

Harry glances at his watch and turns away, heads downstairs to say goodbye to people, to Nick, and grabs Jeff to go home for the night. 

When they leave Fitzrovia and the car is freed onto the careless sprawl of Euston Road, Jeff asks him if he’s okay.

“No,” Harry says, laughing because it hurts.

#

He's at a Christmas party with Nick and his lot when he gets a text from Niall. He thinks it'll be one of those golf jokes Niall likes to send as soon as he hears them from Rory. But it's not. It's Niall, probably a few pints in, saying he misses him and he's flying back to London tomorrow.

Harry jumps on the next jet to LA. He just needs a few days of sun, he told his mum, and he'll be back on the twenty-third, with plenty of time to make it home for Christmas. 

When he lands there's no sun at all, but there's another text from Niall.

_Paula said you're back in LA. You there for xmas ?_

_No. Back on twenty third_

He’s in the car when another text comes in.

_She said your plane gets in one am. Stay and go to your mums in the morning ?_

There’s no saying no to that, Harry thinks. If he’s learned anything in the past few years, it’s to make concessions so the going is easier when ‘no’ actually matters.

 _Yeah. Thanks_ , he texts, and goes back to watching the freeway go by.

He goes to the guesthouse first when the car drops him off, but Niall left nothing behind. 

Harry tugs off to a hundred different hands when he’s soaping up in the steam shower, thinks about Niall’s stubby fingers when he’s shaving after, that time Niall did his armpits so fatally wrong and started Harry’s love affair with waxing, and that time—

He wipes his face with the hot towel and puts some new clothes on after cutting the tags off. 

He’s only been at his piano for a few minutes when Jeff rings, telling him the Azoffs are going up to Tahoe for a couple of days of skiing with some Silicon Valley types, and asking if he wants to come.

Almost all of Squaw Valley is open, even with the weird weather they’ve been having, and Harry has nothing to think about except making it down the groomed runs on borrowed skis and throwing himself into drifts to get a laugh out of Jeff and Glenne. On the second morning, Jeff’s dad takes them down to Speedboat Beach. The water is chilly, but he can walk on the boulders and not worry about slipping on moss and slime and falling in. 

“It’s not tidal up here, is it?” he asks.

“Too much sun,” Jeff’s dad tells him. “Not like where you’re from.” 

Glenne steps onto the boulder behind him. “The sky is always so clear up here, Harry. You can see the Milky Way at night.” 

“Niall would—He’d like that,” Harry says, flushing when he catches himself. “'S like, habit,” he adds, “always looking for stars and stuff. When you’re stuck in hotel rooms all the time, you get a bit romantic about open skies.” 

The Azoffs mutter various things about touring and burnout and how they’re glad that’s over now for him, at least for a while.

Glenne points him to a boulder shaped like a half-wheel of gouda.

Later that night, when everyone is changing for dinner after a boozy couple of hours at the après-ski bar, he sits on his bed and rings Niall’s house.

They’re shit at chit chat but there’s a few minutes of it somehow. Niall tells him about being Rory’s arm candy in Belfast for the night and all the sportspeople he met at the awards show, Harry tells Niall about being on the other side of inside jokes when he’s sat with the Azoffs’ techie friends.

But he’s not got long, so he says, “I’ve thought about it, and I think it’s just not me, Niall.” He worries at the seam of his left sock. “I think that’s too LA even for me,” he jokes. 

“Says the man who needs to snapchat LA every day,” Niall says at the other end of the line.

“Yeah, well,” Harry says quietly. “You’re welcome to ask me again when I’ve lived in LA for more than six months.”

“Shut up, Harry.”

“We’re good, yeah?” He wipes at his face. “You seem like you’re happy with her. Hope it all works out?” he teases.

“What do you mean ‘we’re good’?” 

Harry thinks about the talk they had in his house the night before the LA Jingle Ball, about how it feels like something that happened to someone else. “Niall, what we got into … It was great, but like, don’t fuck that up just for this.” He stares at the door and swallows. “We’re off tour for ages now. It was going to run its course soon anyway.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. I know you didn’t know what you were saying.” 

“No, Niall. This is it for me,” Harry says. He knows it has to be. It is. “Go out with her. You’ve wanted her for ages, and let’s just like, stop here.”

Niall is quiet for a while, but Harry can hear the rustles of his fidgeting. 

“You still staying over before you go to Anne’s?” 

“I probably shouldn’t.”

“You’re being an idiot,” Niall tells him. “See you Tuesday?”

“Yeah,” he relents after sitting there for too long, not knowing what else to say. “Okay. Tuesday. But like, Wednesday because I’m getting in after midnight.”

Niall laughs quietly. “Jesus, Harry. I know.” 

Harry begs off dinner and gets one of the drivers to take him back down the lake. 

The houses across the water and behind him have their lighting on, but it’s starlight that’s helping him make his way past the broad fir trees. 

The galaxy is smeared white over the black blue sky so the earth he's stood on, the earth he’s breathing on, is just a speck in a faraway dark. He wants Liam and Louis to be right next to him, arguing about how much space is up there and why none of them ever think about that. He wants to keep his heart too small to feel. 

Back in LA, head poking out of the car window, Jeff asks if he wants to go skiing again after the holidays, maybe go up to the club in Montana and just get away. Harry is standing in front of his house, nodding, half into a double cone of Black Olive Brittle & Goat Cheese. He can bring whoever he wants, Jeff is saying, even if they don’t ski.

#

He’s a good flier. Gets himself hydrated, decaffeinated, and his muscles loose for the sleep he always gets on planes. The weather kicks up when they’re over the Atlantic, though, bumping them every time he thinks it’s done. There’s no one to ask for a pill from, alone on a commercial flight. He’s awake for the last six hours of the trip, the restless cabin along with him.

When he gets out of Heathrow, all he wants to do is have a cup of tea and go to bed.

He gives his bags to the driver to put in the boot and gets the door himself. He’s one foot in the car when he sees Niall on the other side of the backseat. 

“Hey,” he says, sliding in quick and shutting the door right behind him.

“Surprise,” Niall says. He’s got a questionable hat on, but that’s not what Harry’s worried about right now. 

“What’s going on?”

The driver gets in and Niall makes sure he’s still got the pickup address because that’s where they’re headed back to, Niall’s house. When they’re off, heading straight for the M25, Niall asks him to put up the partition.

“Niall, what’s going on?” Harry asks again. 

Niall reaches for his hand and Harry lets him take it. “Missed you.” 

“Okay, but like, don’t put my hand on your dick. We’re not doing that anymore.”

“Christ,” Niall says. “I dunno who you spend your time with …” He links theirs fingers together and brings their hands up to his face, to his lips, drawing Harry closer. 

“Niall,” Harry starts, seeing him in the flashes of light coming off the motorway. Niall’s jaw is clenched, his eyes shut tight. “What’s happened?”

Niall exhales, his breath warming Harry’s skin. “Nothing,” he says, giving Harry’s hand a kiss before he lets it go. “Just missed you,” he adds, chuckling low. He pats Harry’s thigh and Harry wishes it wasn’t too dark to see his eyes. “Put your seatbelt on.”

They’re silent all the way to Niall’s house, Niall looking out the window the whole time. Harry is kind of looking at Niall, but maybe he’s also kind of nodding off every few minutes because Niall’s hand is never where he expects it to be. 

Harry heads straight for the shower when they get to the house, empty except for the two of them because Niall’s cousin Willie already left for Ireland. He wonders if Niall dropped Willie off at the airport and thought he might as well wait for Harry’s flight to come in, but that doesn’t make sense. When Harry slides opens the bathroom door, the citrusy steam gives way to the malty smell of the tea that Niall always has stocked in his cupboard. Niall is in the guest bedroom, in his sleep clothes, leaning against the dresser with two steaming mugs in his hands. 

One of Niall’s eyebrows goes up. “Do you have all the towels I put in there on you right now?”

Harry shrugs, crossing the hardwood floor. “You put them in there.”

“Fair enough,” Niall says. He passes over one of the mugs. “How was the flight?”

“Bumpy,” Harry tells him, dropping the towels and getting in bed slowly so he doesn’t tip tea all over himself. 

Harry turns over and sees Niall still standing by the dresser, hair squished, his shadow over the duvet. 

“I’ll pick the towels up in the morning,” Harry tells him. “Promise.”

“I don’t care about the towels, Harry,” Niall says.

Harry knows he cares, just a bit. “Thanks for the tea,” he looks up over the rim of the mug, “and for picking me up.”

Niall shrugs. “I wanted to see you.”

“I was coming here,” Harry reminds him. When Niall says nothing, Harry sighs and takes the towel off his head, throws it to the floor. “We’re still friends, Niall. Don’t be weird about this.”

“If we’re still friends, I’d be in bed with you right now. We’d be checking our phones, drinking our teas, me complaining about your flamingo legs, and you complaining about my farts until we fall asleep.”

“Fine,” Harry says, throwing the covers open. He slithers down a little when he remembers he’s got nothing on.

Niall grabs his mug and starts toward the bed. 

“Oh, wait,” he says, stopping just close enough to pass his drink to Harry. “Hold this. Need to make sure the security system’s on.”

There’s no complaining about farts and checking phones because by the time Niall gets in bed, Harry is falling asleep. All he remembers when he wakes up alone is that Niall was hugging him, telling him he could see snow outside, telling him he’s sorry they couldn’t see it before.

Harry looks out the window and sees sleet instead. It’s past nine. He puts on a pair of pants and the bathrobe Niall left out for him. The robe is a perfect fit, almost like he’s wearing nothing at all except he’s warm and there’s a nice weight around his shoulders.

_“Storm Eva, predicted to be the worst to hit the UK and Ireland since the winter of 1962-1963, was expected to arrive on Boxing Day, but already there are reports of adverse weather conditions this morning, with airports in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland notifying passengers of possible delays and cancellations.”_

There’s no one in the living room, just a news channel on the telly covering the storm, the ticker listing warnings for different parts of the country. He looks in the kitchen and sees Niall on his phone, neck flushed, impatience on his face.

Harry goes back upstairs for Niall’s present. A car is meant to get him at two so he’d get to Holmes Chapel before tea, but he thinks he might leave earlier. Niall is probably trying to get out of London as fast as he can to beat the storm.

He loiters in the hallway, staring at the slush in the garden through the floor-to-ceiling windows, until Niall is off the phone.

“You’re up,” Niall says absently. “Want some coffee? Tea?”

“Um, yeah, coffee would be great.” 

“What you got there?”

“Present. For you. Like, for Christmas.” 

Niall smiles. “Thank you. It’s not a box of chocolates you got from the Azoffs, is it?” 

“Shut up.”

The smile widens. “Shut up yourself. You know I’d be happy with that.” He gets out the coffee press and the can of Illy from the last time Harry stayed over. “D’you want me to open it now or should I wait?”

“It’s up to you,” Harry says, putting the gift on the breakfast bar. He sits on the stool closest to where Niall is standing. “They might tear the paper off, though, at security. So.” 

“Yeah, well,” Niall makes an exasperated sound, “I dunno if I’m gonna be able to fly today with all this going on. Can’t get an earlier flight, but Tonie is trying to see what NetJets can do for me.” He pushes the press and the can of coffee at Harry, getting a spoon out for him too. “Here,” he says. “I’ll start the water.” 

It feels like a flare has gone off in Harry’s head, an ugly skittering thing that keeps rising rising rising. “Do you want to come to Cheshire with me for Christmas?”

Niall doesn’t answer, but Harry thinks he’s heard.

“Only if you want to. Mum would be happy to see you. Gemma and Robin too,” he says. “I know it’s not the same but like, they already think you’re family anyway.”

“I can’t do that to Bobby,” Niall says quietly. “I have to try to get back.” Then he laughs. “'Sides, I need to pick up that coffee machine Maura got me last Christmas, don’t I? It’s still sitting in my old room. Bobby won’t use it.”

It was the answer Harry expected anyway. He watches Niall open his present – a box of custom guitar picks Harry ordered months ago – and smiles when the dimple pops up on Niall’s face.

“I love them.”

“Good.” Harry sniffs. “So where’s mine?”

“You’re wearing it.”

Harry looks down. “The bathrobe?”

“Yeah. Fits well, doesn’t it? Lambert told me he knew a place where they size it with your si—” the kettle whistles and Niall turns the gas off, “your measurements. Didn’t know how to wrap it, but I wanted to see it on you anyway.” He scratches his neck. “In case it doesn’t fit.” He coughs and grabs the coffee press Harry loaded with the grounds, fills it with boiling water. “Is it comfortable?”

“It’s fucking great,” Harry tells him, laughing. “Was going to ask where you got it.”

“He can tell you. They make silk ones, too. Maybe better for LA. But this one you could, like, leave it here. Here in England. Your mum’s or here, in the house. For when you stay over.”

There’s that ache in his chest again, when it should just be a simple thing, staying over at each other’s, like how they said they would when he was planning to sell his house. “Thank you. It was really thoughtful of you,” he says. “I think I’ll take it with me, though. Like, I’ll just take it with me wherever.” 

“I know, Harry,” he says, not meeting Harry’s eyes. “I bought that ages ago.” He pushes the filled coffee press back towards Harry’s side of the breakfast bar. “I’m gonna call Tonie and see how far she got with NetJets.”

Harry watches Niall leave the kitchen and takes his hands out of the pockets to press down on the plunger before the coffee gets too strong and bitter. He’s drinking it slowly, going through his mail and messages, when Niall returns, hair pulled all to the right like he’s had someone rubbing it with a balloon.

“No good?” he asks, getting up. If Niall can’t get a jet or even a seat on a shared jet, the airports must really be a mess, which means everywhere else is at least halfway to being a mess.

“Can you still cancel your car? I’ll drive up with you to Cheshire and take you up on Christmas. If you don’t mind me leaving halfway if I can get something going.”

“Yeah. 'Course.” Harry says, collecting his phone from the breakfast bar. “We'd better leave as soon as we can. Everyone’s probably thinking the same and it’s only gonna get worse.”

“I should call my da first. Don’t want him going down to Dublin to get me for nothing,” Niall says. He rubs his face and sighs. “At least the presents went with Willie.”

“I think they’d rather have you there.”

“I’m trying to make myself feel better, Styles.”

Harry calls home too, just to double-check that there’s room for however many days Niall needs before he can get a flight to Ireland. Niall can always bunk with him, he knows, but it’s not his house anymore. His mother tells him the guestroom is actually free. Des won’t be coming for any part of the holidays; he’s staying put in Miami and away from the storm until it passes.

After the call, he pokes his head into the TV room. “Anne said the guestroom’s free. Des isn’t coming.”

Niall is sprawled on his couch, staring at the telly and chewing on his thumb. It’s showing a golf tournament, which can only be a replay from ages ago. “Oh. Right. Hadn’t thought of that. Sorry about your dad, but I guess that’s gonna work out well then.” 

“You getting ready?” Harry asks pointedly.

“Yeah. I’m packed,” Niall says. Harry shouldn’t be surprised. He’s suspected for a while that Niall secretly has a filing system for all his shit. “I’m just waiting for Tonie to swing by.”

It’s half eleven when Niall’s assistant arrives with bags from Liberty. Harry barely has a chance to wish her a happy Christmas before she’s off again. 

“Did you ask her to get you stuff for a country house sleepover? We’re not that fancy, Niall.” 

Niall shoves him aside and closes the front door. "It's where you shop, innit? Figured your family would be all right with whatever’s from there."

“Are there slippers in one of these for me?” Harry asks, toeing the bags. “I need something to open on the day.” 

“Maybe,” Niall says. “Go change, idiot. I don’t want to spend Christmas just with you.”

They take Niall's Range Rover and make their way up on the M1. It’s the slowest traffic Harry has ever been in going north. It’s either the snow, which started up again not long after they left Niall’s house, or there’s been an accident. They turn on the traffic news even though it has always made Harry want to go to sleep. 

Niall curses when he hears the number of accidents listed. 

“I think we better pick up some stuff just in case we get stranded on the road.”

They stop at a service area not far past Milton Keynes. Harry gets sensible things. Niall gets handfuls of Snickers bars and a six-pack of ginger beer. 

Harry thought he’d be driving all the way home so Niall would be free to do whatever he needed to do about his changed plans, but after two hours and only getting a third of the way there, they switch at the next services. He doesn’t make it twenty minutes before he falls asleep. 

The car is parked off of a two-lane road when he wakes up, just farmland to the left and right of it. Niall’s not in the driver’s seat. Probably having a wee somewhere. He can’t tell where they are. They can’t be close to Holmes Chapel yet so he doesn’t know why they’re off the motorway, but maybe the traffic got worse and Niall decided to go another way. 

The screen on the console says they’re north of Stoke-on-Trent. Not that far, then; just not somewhere he’s been. He could use a wee, but all he wants to do is go back to sleep. 

The snow is coming down harder now, and the sky is nothing but strokes of grey. 

He gives Niall another minute and looks in the back for his coat. 

He can’t see a tree where Niall would be. He can’t really see much at all. He turns off the engine and gets out with the keys, jams his beanie down, pulls his coat closed tighter. 

Niall is on his phone in the field across the road, the flurries making him go in and out. Harry moves across the inches of snow covering everything, the wind hitting him sideways, snow flying into his mouth. He’s almost to the other side, but Niall is already hopping the fence to get back to him. 

“Just checking t’ see if we can get back to the trunk road through here,” Niall says. “Couldn’t get the 4G in the car.” 

“The GPS is working,” Harry says, confused.

“Yeah, it wasn’t earlier. I dunno,” Niall says, his eyelashes tipped with snow, his lips almost blue. 

Harry pulls him back toward the Range Rover, gives him back the keys and a hug. “You’re cold, Niall. Come on,” he says, and lopes around the car to get back in his seat.

When Harry wakes up the second time, they're already parked in his mother’s driveway, the snowfall shrouding the house from view.

#

Robin and Mum don’t do huge trees, but they’re always real. The one in the living room is about as tall as Niall, with gold tinsel going all around it, and topped with the angel Gem bought at a Christmas market when she went to Belgium with her friends on the Eurostar. All Harry can smell in the room is cat and fir.

“It’s beautiful, Anne,” Niall says, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them.

Mum strides over, dropping the extra blankets she was showing them onto one of the sofas. “Are you cold, darling?”

Niall shakes his head, chuckling. “No, just can’t feel them yet.”

She shepherds Niall to the fireplace and drags Harry to the kitchen, telling everyone she’s making tea. “Gem was up in Manchester when we heard he was coming so don’t you worry, we have presents for him too,” she whispers. 

Harry follows her to the cooker and turns her around before she reaches for the kettle to go fill it up. “Hi, Mum,” he says.

She looks up at him and laughs. “Oh god, I haven’t said hello to you yet, have I?” she says, drawing him into a hug. He sinks into it and pulls her in tighter. “Hello, darling. I’m so glad you’re home.”

“Me too,” he says, laying his head on her shoulder.

#

He’s wide awake in bed again, but at least it’s his own bed. Not the one he had growing up, that didn’t have a memory foam mattress, but the one they bought when he had his growth spurt a couple of years into One Direction and his back was a bit of a mess. Niall got the same one for his house after the knee. The bed in his mother’s guestroom is just a regular one, or was the last time he came home and he let Granny have his bed when she visited, but the drive up exhausted Niall. He’s probably managed to sleep.

There’s a book Harry could read but when he’s contemplating getting up to get it from his holdall, the floorboards in the hallway start to creak as if someone’s trying to be quiet but can't help going back and forth. 

Whoever it is goes downstairs, hitting the treads as if they don’t know or care about the loose ones. Harry gets up and follows to see if it’s Mum or Gem who isn’t sleeping yet. Mum’s worried about Robin getting back so it’s likely her.

It’s Niall, standing still in the living room with the bags of shopping Tonie brought over. He turns around when Harry switches on the lamp closest to the doors.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know where to put the presents. Never done this before.”

“Done what?”

Niall is sheepish when he says, “Spend Christmas somewhere else.”

Harry walks over to him and takes one of the bags. “They stopped putting the presents out early years ago because I’d like, peel off the tape to see what was inside. Everyone usually keeps theirs hidden somewhere. But we can put these under the tree now, if you want,” he offers. 

Niall is smiling, shaking his head. “No, I’ll keep them in my room.”

“I won’t touch them, I promise,” Harry says. 

“Yeah, but it’s what your family do, isn’t it?” Niall says, taking the bag back, his fingers brushing Harry’s. 

Harry sniffs, the sound loud to his own ears. He looks over at the sofa where his mum left the blankets. “Is your room warm enough?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Niall says, starting to go.

“Niall,” Harry reaches out to touch his arm, “thanks for getting us here.”

“Thanks for inviting me.”

“Thanks for coming,” Harry says automatically. Because he’s been brought up a polite idiot. “Like, you could’ve stayed in London, tried your luck with the flights.”

“Can’t think of a more boring thing to do,” Niall says with a small smile, and gets moving again. Harry follows him to the hallway, switching off the lamp when he goes by it. 

“Merry Christmas Eve Eve, Harry,” Niall says from the stairs.

It would be so easy to say he’s going up too and give Niall a hand with the bags all the way to the guestroom. “Merry Christmas Eve Eve, Niall.” 

He goes into the kitchen to find something else to do.

#

It’s brilliant, Harry thinks, when he wakes up on Christmas Eve and sees two feet of snow outside. There’s no way anyone can get out and about easily in it, which means he can have a wander without anyone bothering him. He and Niall both could.

But Anne is insistent about everyone staying in. 

Gemma takes him aside and tells him Anne just heard Robin is stuck at his brother’s in Cornwall and to give her a little while to stop thinking the storm is a murderous thing.

He’s texting and emailing to see if someone can find a way out of Cornwall for Robin when Niall comes to the doorway of his room and asks if there is anything they can do. Harry tells him there’s probably nothing but he’s giving it a shot. Niall goes away with a stubborn gleam in his eyes. He passes back down the hallway a few minutes later, when Harry is speaking to his assistant, who’s already off in Portsmouth with her daughter and family but is still on call. It’s not long before he hears his mother laughing downstairs. 

There’s laughter outside too. He opens the window facing the back garden and sees Niall in the snow, or just his head, more like. 

“I’ll call you back, Paula,” Harry says, hanging up.

“It _is_ cold, but come on, Anne,” Niall shouts. “We gotta take a selfie like this.” 

“Smile, Niall!” Harry steadies his arms on the sill because he can’t stop giggling and takes a couple of good shots of Niall with his phone, the ruddy face under the blue hoodie among a sea of white. He slaps some thermals on under his clothes and runs down to join them.

The selfie is a bit of a disaster because they can’t all be in the shot without having other body parts stick out, but his mum laughs for a good ten minutes, the bells on the antlers of her reindeer beanie tinkling with her. When everyone is getting cold but before they collectively give up, he tells them to keep their bodies in the snow and goes back to his bedroom to get a photo through the window like the ones he took of Niall. The snow isn’t smooth anymore so they basically look like three idiots who decided to sit covered in lumps of snow instead of people buried up to their necks, but their grins are beautiful and Harry can’t love them more.

An hour later, both he and Gemma have their hair up in towels after their hot showers. Niall tried to join in but his fell off before the water for tea even boiled. 

Anne is still upstairs, and probably still in the bath. Gemma took the first cup of tea up to her and came back to the breakfast bar they're sitting around with the report that Anne was thirty pages into an e-book with the jets on because she likes living dangerously. 

Harry is on his phone messaging with people in London, half-listening to Niall and Gemma talk about those survival reality TV shows Liam and Niall liked to keep up with on tour, when Gemma asks what they’d bring with them to a desert island if they could only take one thing.

“Guitar,” Harry says, not bothering to look up. “That’s what you’d take, Niall.”

“Maybe,” Niall says. “But if we’re talking survival stuff, personally, I’d go with the scissors, me. Like one of them kitchen shears.”

“Really?” 

From the way she said it, Harry can tell that Gemma’s got her tell-me-more face on. It’s not just anyone who’ll take her up on it.

“Loads of people would take a knife, wouldn’t they, but you could make a knife. Like, a thing that has a sharp edge. But it’d be hard to make a pair of scissors,” Niall tells her. “And you’d get more out of them. More utility, cos you can cut lots of different things with scissors. You can also kind of use them like pliers. And if you need a knife you could just hold it like,” Harry looks up and sees Niall demonstrating what he means, his scissor fingers held open by his other hand, “and you go,” one scissor finger turned into a knife finger sawing the air between him and Gemma, making her burst into laughter, “like that.”

“Yeah, all right, Bear Grylls,” Harry gets up and takes Niall’s cup, feeling one of the cats brush by his legs. “D’you want another cup of tea?”

Niall looks up at him, hands toying with the cardboard from the six-pack of ginger beer. “What would you bring then? And yes, please.”

“Since you’ve got the surviving down to an art, I guess I’d bring the records,” and before anyone can say he’s only allowed one thing, he says, “like, tucked into the case of a portable record player, which is what I would pick for my desert island item.”

Niall and Gemma give him matching looks of exasperation, but they let the cheat slide.

“It’d have to be a gramophone,” Gemma says, placing her cup in his offered hand. “You’d have to wind it up every time you want to play it.”

Harry shrugs. “Then that’ll be my job, won’t it? And because I’m nice, I’ll make the tea, too.”

“Who’s gonna bring the tea?”

“We’ll grow the tea, Niall,” he says. “You can use the shears when we harvest. Like, cut the tips off the plant. The tips are the bits we want.”

Niall raises an eyebrow. “So I’m doing the harvesting too?” he asks, flattening the cardboard as if he’s a pro at doing his recycling.

“Because you’re in charge of the shears,” Harry explains, putting the cups down on the counter.

Gemma snorts. “You might be better off getting stranded on your own, Niall.”

“Hey,” Harry protests.

“What would you bring, Gem?”

“A first-aid kit.” She lifts Olivia onto her lap. “Which would also have scissors in it.”

“Clever,” Niall says approvingly.

Gemma laughs.

“I hate it when you two pander to each other,” Harry mutters, checking the teapot to see if he could just add some more hot water to it. “Why would we need two pairs of scissors anyway?”

“I’m not basing my choice on being stranded with the both of you,” Gemma says. “Not that I’d mind, of course.”

“Likewise,” Niall says.

"Pandering!" Harry warns, but no one's listening.

“And we should be planning for a worst-case scenario. What if I’m stranded alone?”

Harry stops filling the kettle and turns around, wanting to say that’s not the worst thing that could happen, but Niall is already saying to Gem, “Harry and I will come join you."

“I—” his sister starts, but she ends up just staring at them with the dopiest look on her face, Olivia pawing her chest for attention.

He looks down and Niall is giving him a soft smile.

“With music," Harry adds magnanimously, swinging back to the sink to finish what he was doing.

“And tea, please.”

“And tea if the harvest's good,” Harry tells her. Best to be safe than sorry. “But definitely a pair of kitchen shears.” He takes the ones his mum’s had since the flat above the pub, the wooden sleeves around the joints bleached from years of washing, and offers them to Niall. “These should do. What do you think, Niall?”

“Yep, these should do very well,” Niall says, using the shears to cut a shape out of the flattened cardboard. He holds up a five-point star with the 'Crab' from Crabbie’s on it. "First Place best desert island Christmas ornament goes to the crab star."

#

His mother hasn’t missed Midnight Mass since before Gemma was born, but there’s no way to get to the church unless they walk.

“There’s a lot more snow coming tonight, Mum,” Harry warns her.

“They’ll still run the service, though, won’t they?” Gemma says from her perch on the kitchen counter, picking grapes off the cheese plate they had for dessert. 

“Yes,” Anne says, “although I’m not sure they’ll have enough people for the carols.”

Harry wags his eyebrows at Niall. “We could fill in.”

“Good evening, Holmes Chapel. We’re One-Half Direction. Nice to see you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you for choosing to spend your evening with us,” Niall says in perfect imitation of Harry’s opening. “Yeah,” he chuckles, “not likely.”

When Anne and Gemma leave, covered up from head to toe and promising to message Harry when they get to the church and when they’re coming back, he and Niall are left in the house alone for the first time since they arrived. 

Harry turns the digital radio on, looks for a station with Christmas music. He remembers going halfsies on the radio with Gemma for Anne’s birthday when he was fourteen, and needing to borrow seven quid from Robin because they forgot about the shipping. 

“Is your mum gonna be okay?”

“I was thinking …” 

“You gonna finish that sentence or what?”

He makes a face. “I’m looking for music, Niall.” 

Niall sighs, drums on the breakfast bar, clicks his fingers to the beat.

Harry rolls his eyes. “All right!” he says, leaving the radio on a station playing a cover of _White Christmas_. “I was thinking, Robin makes mulled wine every year. We could make it now and when she comes home, the house’ll smell like it usually does.”

“Let’s do it,” Niall says, literally jumping out of his chair. “What do we need?” 

“A recipe would be good.”

“Easy.” Niall unlocks his phone and starts typing. “Jamie Oliver. He’s got to have one.”

Niall puts Harry in charge of the fruits and himself in charge of the spices. It seems an unfair distribution of work seeing that there’s nothing to do with the spices except get them out of jars. Niall slices the vanilla pod in half and rubs the vanilla on his finger across his skin. It sticks like a faint black moustache. “Mm. Does it look as good as it smells?”

Harry drops the rinds into the heating sugar and squeezes the clementines over all of it. Niall adds the bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon stick, and vanilla. They pour in the red wine they found, just enough to cover everything, and waits for the syrup to boil. The whole kitchen smells like a Christmas fair.

He peels a clementine for himself. “Does Bobby do a mulled wine?”

“No,” Niall says. “Not really a wine drinker, Bobby.”

“Maura?”

“No. I don’t think so. Though, maybe.” Niall winks, face scrunching up. “Close your mouth, Harry. You’re spraying juice all over the place.” 

Harry lobs a rindless lemon at him.

They’ve poured the rest of the wine into the pot and added the star anise to finish when Niall’s phone rings. Niall is at the sink washing his hands so Harry picks the phone up to bring it over to him. It’s an LA number, the name showing Addams.

Niall clicks the call away to voicemail.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Harry tells him, guessing it was Selena trying to reach him. He had the same nickname on his phone for a girl called Wednesday once.

“I know I didn’t.” Niall goes to look in the pot, tucking the phone into his back pocket. There’s a piece of lint on the nape of his neck. “I’ll call her when we’re done.” 

Harry looks around for more clementines to peel and eat. “Do you miss her?”

“Don’t know what I’m missing, do I?” Niall says lightly. “Never spent Christmas with her.” He puts down the ladle on the little porcelain Christmas tree plate thing so the drips of wine aren’t all over the counter. Harry didn’t even know what it was for the first time he saw it.

“So you’ll miss us next year, then?”

Niall grins. “’Course. I’ll think of your great big gob spraying clementine juice everywhere and drink to it.”

#

Harry jumps out of bed and puts on his new bathrobe. It’s fucking Christmas.

Both Gem and Mum’s bedroom doors are wide open. They must be downstairs. Niall’s is still closed. Harry bangs it open.

“Happy Christmas, Niall!” he screams.

Niall is already awake, though, just a bit startled. “Happy Christmas, Harry,” he laughs.

“Anne and Gem are up. They’ve probably got the presents out now. You coming?”

“Where’s all yours?”

“I took them down before I went to bed,” Harry says. “I’ve been very organised.”

“Oh?” There’s a glint in Niall’s eyes. “For Christmas, you mean.” 

Harry is filled with Christmas spirit and he flossed last night. Nothing can shake him today. “Are you coming or what?”

“You wanna get in for a minute?” Niall asks, grasping the top of the duvet. “That robe looks very warm and I’m cold.”

“All right. Fine. But just for a minute.” 

He settles in and turns so he’s on his side, facing Niall.

Niall mirrors him, smiling. He doesn’t come closer, though. Not close enough to be touching the robe anyway.

There’s not much daylight yet but he can see the freckles on Niall’s face, the fine lines in the corners of his bright eyes. “Happy Christmas, Niall.”

“Happy Christmas, Harry.”

“Did you ring Bobby?”

“Not yet. He’s probably at Greg's. Probably dug himself a tunnel to get there,” Niall says. "He'll ring me when he's got Theo with him."

“Maura?”

“Yeah, I should ring her,” Niall says, and doesn’t move until Harry reminds him that there are presents waiting downstairs. 

Harry gets the phone early on to say hello to Maura and Niall's Nana and wish them a happy Christmas. He thinks about going ahead when Niall has to go through the round of relatives, but Niall is speaking Irish and the robe is nice and warm. He lies on his back and watches the ceiling get minutely lighter and lighter.

“They don’t sound all that sad about not having you there. You must’ve sent Willie off with some good presents,” Harry muses when Niall is finally off the call.

“Not sure which part of that to kick you for first.”

Harry pushes his shoulders into the bed to shimmy further down under the covers. “'S kind of crazy. We’re finally on break and it’s the first Christmas you’re not spending with them.”

“'M not the only one, though, am I? Lots of people are stuck somewhere. Grimmy, you were saying last night. And Robin’s not here.”

"Yeah,” he turns his head to look at Niall, “but we’re talking about you right now."

Niall gives him a small smile. “It's fine, Harry,” he sighs. “Mam didn’t want me flying in this weather anyway. And she said, the way Greg’s been lately, it might not be the worst thing.”

Harry’s eyebrows rise at that, but he doesn’t want to get into it, not right now, when it’s Christmas and they should just talk about good things. “'M glad you're here, though, Niall,” he says. “Like, not alone in London just with other people stuck there,” he quickly adds. “But maybe that would be fun too. You'd have like, desert island fun.”

“Harry, if I weren’t here, I’d be in Mullingar,” Niall says. “There was a seat on a jet going out from Manchester to Dublin. It would’ve been tight but I probably could’ve made it after dropping you off here.”

“What? Why didn’t you take it?” Maura wasn’t any different on the phone, but she’s really nice. Harry hopes she’s not actually angry with him. He turns and gets up on one elbow. “We could’ve gone straight to Manchester. I could’ve driven myself here.”

“That’s not why, idiot. When I heard about the seat and we were almost here, I called home and told them maybe I needed to be here,” Niall says. “Bobby said to do what I needed to do. So, I’m here.” He runs a hand through his hair and faces the ceiling, the blues in his eyes like little pools. 

“And why did you think you needed to be here?” Harry asks slowly, using Niall’s own words.

“I hated thinking that I fucked up. That I fucked us up. And the thought of being away from you, not being able to do anything about it. I hated it.”

That’s not right, Harry thinks. “But it’s Christmas, Niall. And we sorted things, didn’t we? You’re with Selena and we’re fine.”

“'S that really how it is for you?” Niall asks, his voice so low that Harry can barely make out what he’s saying. “Cos I think about not being with you and it makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

Harry wants to say he feels the same, but they’re meant to pull each other out of this, aren’t they, instead of wallowing together. “Don’t you think it’ll get easier?” It should. It always does. “And like, loads of friends don’t fuck. We didn’t use to.”

“But then we did, didn’t we?” 

He doesn’t reply. He knows that there’s no going back. Maybe it came to mind when they started up, but obviously they didn’t think everything through.

“There’s this amazing girl who wants to be with me and doesn’t care if I’m also with you. There’s you, who don’t care if I’m with her because you’ve decided you don’t want to be with me. The solution seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? 'Cept, I don’t think it’s a solution at all. Not for me.” Niall makes a strangled noise and laughs. “What a Christmas. Sorry, Styles. I’m ruining yours.”

“You’re not,” Harry says. Gem and Mum are probably wondering where he is, but he’s usually the crazy one on Christmas morning. The glasses of buck’s fizz will tide them over until he comes downstairs. “I just think, like, it’s not for forever, is it? Even if it is, I’m always going to care about you. You’re always going to care about me.” He pokes at the bit of skin showing through Niall’s unbuttoned Henley. “We’re just not going to fuck anymore, Niall. That’s all.” 

Niall pushes Harry’s finger away. “Cos that’s all you think we did,” he says. “Yeah. Sure. You know, Harry, I call you an idiot all the time because I know you’re the complete opposite.” 

Harry’s face burns. “Come downstairs when you’re ready,” his mouth blurts out, and then his legs are taking him out from under the covers and the room entirely.

#

They were doing presents and cracking open more champagne for his mum when the hour the band did with Alice for Radio 1 came on. What Niall said to her about it being a sin not to go home at Christmas turned his own head into even more of a mess. He knew it was an exaggeration, and Gem had a lot of fun taking the piss out of Niall for it, but he still spent too much time on the cross-trainer in the conservatory after. He’s in charge of the vegetables today and now he’s running more than a little behind.

Half of the brussels sprouts are off their stem when he hears his mum answer a call in the dining room. Going by her thunderclap laughter and mothering voice, he can guess who’s called. He cuts off the rest of the sprouts with her kitchen shears, drowns all of them in cold water, and gets the carrots ready for chopping.

Anne comes in when he’s moving from the fat carrots to the thin ones. She passes over her phone to him. “Poor Nick’s stuck in London, darling,” she tells him before leaving with her new Christmas napkins.

He knew that. He saw the photos on Nick’s Insta last night. They’ve already messaged about it.

“Hello?” he fits the phone between his shoulder and his cheek.

He can hear Nick talking to the dogs. He picks the peeler back up and does the rest of the carrots. If he closes his eyes, it’s like he’s back in Nick’s little kitchen, doing dinner prep over wine and balsamic vinegar crisps. 

“Hello, popstar,” Nick catches up, voice breezy. “So, Christmas with the parents, hey?” he laughs. “You and Niall getting serious?”

“Shut up, Nick.”

“Oh my god,” Nick says slowly, and Harry thinks about hanging up for a second but it’s too late now. “Have you two been—Oh my god. Harry.” 

Harry puts the peeler down and grabs the kitchen knife, lops the ends off the carrot he’s holding. “What?”

“Is this where I say ‘congratulations’ or d’you really want me to shut up?”

“Don’t congratulate me. We’re not together.” Not anymore, he thinks. And never were, maybe. Except both of them can’t seem to get past whatever they did have. “It was just a bit of fun. You know Niall. He’s always up for fun,” he says, trying to put it into words Nick uses to talk about people he gets off with. 

“So you’re having fun at Anne’s house.”

“What? No. No, just—He’s just here because he can’t go home,” Harry explains. “Anne probably told you Robin’s not here. So it’s nice having four still for dinner. She's at least not like, crying into the placemats and things.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re having a fun and nice Christmas with Niall.”

“Okay, if you’re going to take the piss, I’m hanging up,” he says. He’s going to julienne the carrots, he’s decided, thick for parboiling. Prep will go faster too that way. “You’re the first person I’ve told and he’s only told Selena.” Fuck. “Please forget I said that. Fuck. I’m never telling anyone ever again.”

“Harry, what are you doing?”

“I said, nothing, Nick. We haven’t—Not since she and him—It was only ever a tour thing and it wasn’t ever—” Harry laughs at how badly he’s keeping up his side of the conversation. “Whatever. It’s Christmas and he can’t get home so he’s here.”

“No, Harry, what is that noise? What are you doing? Are you chopping stuff? Can you stop for a minute?”

“D’you know,” he puts down the kitchen knife and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, “the crazy thing is, she said she’s fine about it? She said as long as we’re honest with each other, she doesn’t need him to choose?” It still sounds ridiculous to his ears. 

“Good Lord,” Nick finally says. “This is the other kind of Christmas I wasn’t expecting to have.”

“Stop being so dramatic, Nicholas.”

“Stop having so much drama in your life!”

“That was the other thing she said,” Harry continues, the slices of carrot sliding over and sideways on the cutting board, shook off by the new ones along the blade. “As long as we’re all okay with it and there’s no drama, she’s fine. Have you ever heard such bollocks?”

“Yes, Harold, as a matter of fact, I have,” Nick says. “It’s not always bollocks, but if that’s not what you want, it’s not what you want.” 

Harry stops chopping, closes his eyes, wants Nick’s voice to be the only thing in his head, not like on the radio but when they’re side by side on Nick’s couch, window blinds down to mute the street lights and the jobs they have to do out there. 

“Harry, you still there? Did you just hang up on—”

“I don’t know what I want,” he says. He drags a hand over his eyes, not wanting his mum to come back in and have a worse Christmas. “But he didn’t ask me, did he? He asked her, and then told me what they wanted.” 

“Harry. I’m so sorry.”

He shrugs, even though he knows Nick can’t see him. “I want him to be happy with her,” he says. “They really like each other.”

“I could tell,” Nick says, and Harry loves him for it, for not being the kind of person who’ll say things just because he thinks that’s what Harry wants to hear. 

“But me and him—I mean, he and—We’re best friends,” he says. “Just because they’re like, a couple, it shouldn’t mean we’re less important.”

Nick lets out a long sigh and Harry can see him collapsing into his couch, Pig Dog jumping up to sit by him. “I reckon that’s the hard thing about sleeping with your friends. Like, everything’s a bit worse when it’s bad because they’re important to you.” 

“Good thing I was never your type.”

“No sparks, Styles.”

“No sparks,” Harry says, smiling.

“I always thought there could be something between me and Niall, though,” Nick says. “Too late now.”

“Ha ha.”

“Don’t be sad, popstar. There’s a reason you’re best friends, yeah?” 

Harry looks out the window and sees the fat flakes of snow drifting down still. “I’m sorry you couldn’t get out of London. Would’ve taken you with us if we’d known.”

“The cats would’ve gone ballistic,” Nick says. “I would’ve had to sleep in the car with the dogs.” 

“No, you wouldn’t’ve,” Harry argues. “We have a shed in the garden. It’s really big.”

#

At Christmas dinner, his mother sits at the head of the table, with Niall to her right, Harry to her left, and Gemma next to Niall. It’s perfect because both Niall and Mum are being really chatty and Gemma doesn’t really like talking at meals, not even when it’s meant to be a party. Usually it’s Harry who has to make a lot of noise whether he wants to or not, but today he doesn’t have to at all. He spends half of the meal looking at the snow outside and the other half eating the amazing food everyone cooked. The goose is tender, the pigs in a blanket on the perfect side of burnt, and the swede mash so good Harry has three helpings even though he knows he’ll be gassy all night. Niall will probably be farting till morning because he can’t burp.

They do the crackers before dessert, Harry and Anne having to look for theirs because they’re white like the tablecloth and buried under masses of holly. Whoever decorated the table went a bit mad, Harry thinks, but he doesn’t make a joke about it in case it was her. He knows she’s not herself right now.

Niall puts his paper crown on without any fuss after they pull the crackers open in a chain around the table, Niall promising to Anne that’s also how they do it at Bobby’s and at Maura’s. “Where did you get these?” he asks, inspecting the gift in his when there’s a lull after Anne left the table. “Very posh, aren’t they? I got this thing, erm, what is it, a letter opener? What did you get, Harry?” 

“A hip flask,” Harry says, handing it over. It’s one of the smallest he’s ever seen. Could probably even fit in the front pockets of the women’s jeans they both wear. 

“It’s nice,” Niall says, passing it to Gemma, who got a bottle opener. “Usually you’d get a joke and a piece of chocolate, don’t you? Or an eraser or something.” 

“Mum got them at Fortnum’s,” she says, glancing at the doorway to the kitchen, where Anne went to do the pudding. “There’s another set in the cupboard that’s just the fun kind. I think these were meant for her and Robin and them.” 

Harry meets Niall’s gaze and shrugs. “Nothing wrong with us kids opening our own bottles, walking around boozed up, reading other people’s letters.” 

Niall snorts. Gemma lobs half an empty cracker at him. The cardboard stings a little.

They’re passing around the brandy sauce for the pudding when the power goes out. It’s not quite dark yet outside, but the bay window in the dining room faces north and suddenly everyone’s faces are mostly lit by the glow of the candles on the table. Niall looks really handsome, like he should be a politician or something, maybe in the eighteenth century so he’d get a bust made of him, but without the gold foil crown, and everyone could see him whenever they wanted even when he’s away doing political stuff. He wasn’t handsome when the two of them started up last year, Harry thinks. He was just other things. And now someone else has noticed too.

“Harry? You’re going to spill that.”

“What?” he looks at his mum. His elbow feels wet. “Oh, shit,” he laughs, looking at the pool of sauce on his dessert plate and the way it’s spilled onto the tablecloth. “I mean, sorry.” He gets up, uses his napkin to wipe the bottom of the sauce jug. “Sorry, Mum.”

Niall passes his own napkin over. So does Gem.

His mother is laughing at him and using her napkin to dry his elbow. “It’s fine, H. The lights going out spooked me too.”

They spend the rest of the day dozing in the living room, reading and eating biscuits, slowly going through the vat of mulled wine he and Niall made the day before. “Bless the gas cooker,” his mother carols at one point. Everyone disappears for a nap in the early evening, possibly maybe a little drunk. The whole house smells like spices, fruit, and wine. That’s one of the things he and Niall did, Harry thinks, nodding off in his bed.

When he gets up, the power still hasn’t come back on but the wood-burning stove his mum installed last year is still keeping his room warm. He goes for a wee by the light of his iPhone. It’s at 43%, though, so he decides to find a candle in case the outage lasts all night. He’d rather save the power for actual phone stuff. He can hear Gemma and Niall in the living room talking about stuff they’re reading on the internet, the live updates about what’s going on where because of the storm and people still trying to get home. 

“If your name’s Eva, I’m telling you, you’d be so annoyed right now,” Niall says groggily. “Imagine everyone you know cracking the same stupid jokes all Christmas.”

Gemma groans. “I know. Naming storms after people is so stupid, isn't it? They should’ve gone for numbers or codes, or if they have to use names, fictional character names.”

“Yeah, like villains from comics or something like that. Storm Dr Evil.”

From the hallway, both their heads, half-lit by the glow of their screens and the fire burning on the grate, look like vintage bubble ornaments. Harry thinks it would make a cool black and white photo.

He takes a right for the kitchen instead and finds his mother putting away the food by torchlight. 

“I know it’s not on,” Anne says about the refrigerator, putting more Tupperware things into it, “but it’ll probably come on in the morning, won’t it?”

“'S cooler than the room,” Harry says, passing her the rest of the leftovers. “I mean, we could put it all in the shed tomorrow if it’s not.”

His mum smiles. “See how we go in the morning.”

“That was a really nice Christmas dinner, Mum. Thank you,” he says, and kisses her temple. “I’m sorry Robin’s not here.”

“So am I, darling.” She pats his cheek, and fiddles with his hair. “I’m glad you and your sister are here, though,” she says. “And I’d have Niall here for Christmas every year if he wanted to spend it with us.”

Harry smiles, ducking his head to get away from the hair touching, and goes around her to get to the kettle.

“Is he having a good time?”

“'Think so,” he tells her. “He likes the socks. He’s already got them on. All three pairs.”

“Oh, well, they’re meant to be for warmer weather, that’s why. But good. I’m glad. Are you making tea or coffee?” His mum brings out boxes of teabags and tins of ground coffee, showing them to him one by one. 

“Peppermint tea, if you have it.”

“I do. Peppermint infusion, it says,” she tells him. “He must miss Bobby and Maura, and little Theo.”

Harry shrugs. “You know Niall. The only people he’s not missing might be us, but just cos we’re here with him.”

“I don’t know, H. I don’t think you can miss everyone.”

“Yeah, but you’re not Niall,” Harry says, giving her a smile.

His mother shakes her head. “Honestly,” she says, getting a mug for him. “I can’t say anything to that, can I?”

They scrounge around to see if there might be more torches in the drawers, but there’s only candles left so he takes a couple and plugs them into the holders from the table, promising her he won’t burn the house down. He snacks on the clementines while the tea cools and tells her about skiing in Tahoe, about the gouda rock at the edge of the lake, and the Silicon Valley people. He knows she sort of cares but he can tell she’s just drowsily waiting for him to drink his tea so he takes big burning gulps of it. When there’s nothing left in the snowman mug, he tells her to go to sleep.

It’s almost impossible to clear up by candlelight. He blows the candles out and waits until his eyes have adjusted a bit before leaving the kitchen. He squints at the beam of light crossing the hallway, throwing odd shadows on the walls. The torch is held too low for it to be Niall. 

“Where’s Mum?”

“Gone to bed,” Harry says, keeping his voice low. “I think trying to be cheerful all day did it for her.”

“Misses Robin, too, I should think.” 

He scratches at his jaw. “We can keep her busy tomorrow. Set up a Monopoly tournament or something,” he suggests. “Try to take her mind off it.”

Gemma shakes her head. “I think she’s all right for the morning,” she says. “She wants to go into the village, bring a few things to the care home and say hello. People’s relatives probably couldn’t make it to see them for Christmas.”

“Oh. Can I—”

“I don’t think so, H. We don’t want accidents, people trying to follow you with the streets so dangerous to drive on.” 

“That’s not going to happen,” Harry says, irritated that she didn’t even have to think about it and that she could be right.

“Maybe next year. When everyone’s forgotten about you,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. By torchlight, it makes her look like something out of a silent horror film. It’s kind of impressive. He’ll have to remember how to do it. “Happy Christmas, Harry,” she chuckles, kissing his cheek. She goes around him to go up the stairs, blankets under one arm and a torch in her other hand. 

He’s about to follow when he sees the fire still burning high in the living room. He walks in to put it out, and maybe get warm, when he sees Niall sitting in one of the armchairs, staring at nothing.

#

“Hey.”

Niall looks up. “Hey, Harry.”

“Staying down here?” When his mum and Robin renovated last year, they put stoves in all the rooms except theirs, which already had a fireplace, but the stove in the guestroom is small. “Is it too cold in your room?”

“No. Just thinking.”

“Want me to leave you alone?”

Niall shakes his head. “No. Was thinking about you, actually. Maybe you’re sick of talking, but I think we should.” 

Harry sits on the sofa. He can feel the warmth of the fire, but there’s his blanket from primary school just bunched up at the end. He grabs it and drapes it over his lap and legs.

“Heard what you said to Nick,” Niall starts. Harry raises his eyebrows at that. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Your mum told me to ‘arrange the holly’,” Niall air quotes, “on the dining table but didn’t tell me how to do it so I was giving that a go when I heard you talking about us and I couldn’t help listening,” he says, running a hand through his hair over and over. “What you said, Selena and me talking about things before we came to you, that’s not what happened. I didn’t ask her anything.” His eyes go up to his hand. He stops and brings it down to his lap and stares at it, the fingers twisting up with his other one’s. “I didn’t ask her anything before I asked you. That’s not how it was. Not to me, anyway, but maybe it was to you. I dunno. We didn’t talk about it, so. We should.”

“Okay,” Harry says, waiting for him to go on.

“She asked me if I was seeing someone. Because she didn’t want to come in—to come between people,” Niall tells him. “No one ever asked me that before. Usually people don’t care, do they?” 

“Didn’t you say she’s been cheated on?” Harry mumbles. “Maybe that’s why.”

Niall looks away. “That’s not the point, H. I wanted to be honest with her. I wanted to tell her things about myself.”

Because you’re in love with her, Harry wants to say. Like in the movies, when they show the couple in a montage, talking and listening to each other, and there’s a dog and a bicycle with a basket on the front.

“But I can’t think about myself without thinking about you,” Niall says, the flames in the fireplace making twisty shapes on his glasses. “I had to keep like, starting the story all over again when I was trying to tell her about me without talking about you. I couldn’t do it.” 

Harry pulls his blanket up over his shoulders and sits cross-legged so his feet are still covered too.

“We said it was a tour thing, but it felt like we were more. We weren’t just friends who have a fun—a good time with each other. It didn’t feel like how it was with Amy for me, or with Laura.”

“Niall,” he starts, “how many of your friends have you slept with?”

Niall snorts. “You should talk.”

"Toucan," Harry says. Niall chuckles with him. It was a joke that got started on their 2nd tour, when they learned the word ‘touché’ from someone at Live Nation and Liam confused it with ‘toucan’. Harry supposes if anyone else remembers, it’s Niall.

They’re quiet again, the fire crackling in front of them, until Niall says, “You think me and Selena are a couple, you and me friends who fuck. But what if we’re the couple and me and Selena are the friends who fuck? And no one is getting off with anyone else right now, by the way. I told her after you left for LA that maybe I need to think some things through.”

People not dating because of him isn’t good news, and the idea of being one-half of a couple is too big to process when he’s wearing a Christmas elf jumper, but it feels like there’s room to breathe now, like he’s off the rollercoaster he never agreed to be on in the first place. 

Harry can’t help himself and asks: “What if we’re the couple who don’t fuck?”

“Are you going on a sex sabbatical in twenty-sixteen?”

He shrugs, making a face because what Niall said was funny but he doesn’t feel like laughing and giving Niall the satisfaction.

“It doesn’t matter to me what you want to call us. You draw these lines but maybe there aren’t any,” Niall says. “And I’m sorry for being a shit friend to you.”

Niall’s not like lots of people he got to know because of work. He always means it when he apologises. “Apology accepted,” Harry says. He lifts his legs onto the ottoman and puts his socked feet against Niall’s. “Can you really not think about yourself without thinking about me?” he asks. 

“Yep.”

He wiggles his arches into place so his and Niall’s feet are lying snug together. “When you brush your teeth, do you think about my teeth?”

Niall nods, stretching out. Harry can feel the wool of his socks rubbing his feet. It’s fucking bliss.

“What do you think about?”

“I think about how big they are, mainly, and how you’re lucky you’ve got such a fat head or they’d look out of place.” 

Harry jabs his big toe into the side of Niall’s foot. Niall sticks his into Harry’s arch. Harry grimaces. Maybe his foot hasn’t fully recovered. “Okay, truce!” 

“You’d think we’d know better,” Niall says, wincing and flexing his own right foot. “Truce.”

“Want to go lie down? I have a warm room and a memory foam mattress,” Harry offers.

Niall laughs. “That is the worst pick-up line ever, but yeah, let’s go.”

They don’t move until the logs burn down and the only warmth he feels is coming from Niall’s feet tucked up against his.

#

He wakes up thinking he’s in LA, the sheets kicked off the bed because the night never cooled down. He’s in his old room at his mum’s house, though, the pillow smelling of his hair stuff and Persil. He sniffs and rolls over. There’s just Niall’s phone charging on the mattress, no Niall. He sits up, the gurgling of the radiators filtering through. The stove’s died down but that explains the heat.

“Power’s back on,” Niall says, coming out of the bathroom. He’s in his boxer briefs, his torso and neck flushed red, his hair wet.

“You’re very handsome,” Harry tells him.

“Thank you.” That’s Niall dismissing him, but Harry knows he’s always pleased about it. “I’m also burning up. Just had to douse my head in cold water. Mind if I crack the window open?”

“Go for it.” 

“Looks icy out there.” Niall unlocks the casement window and opens it both ways, top and bottom. “Feels good, though.” 

“What time is it?”

“Half ten,” Niall replies, coming to him.

Niall sits on the edge of the bed so they’re face to face. He puts his hand on the moth on Harry’s stomach, runs his thumb over one of the wings. “If you’re a woman with extra nipples, you’d have milk coming out of them too when you’ve got a baby.” Harry loves it when Niall tells him things he knows, but he already knows this one. “Maybe your kids would grow up being really into moths but they wouldn’t know why,” Niall adds, which is something Harry’s not thought of before.

“But not killing them and sticking them up on walls.”

“No.”

Niall leans over and kisses him, his lips cool, his blue eyes half-lidded. “'Morning, Harry.”

“'Morning, Niall,” he says into Niall’s mouth, kissing him back. Niall’s shoulder is smooth and solid under his hand. Niall puts one hand on the mattress to hold himself up when Harry coaxes him down. He runs his hand down the back of Niall’s arm, the grooves of his muscles, stroking the wrinkles of his elbow, the hair on his forearms. He’s had this for a year but it feels different, here in his room.

“What do you want?” Niall asks, nipping the base of his neck, tongue flicking the chain where his cross hangs, the chain sharp and cool on his skin when it falls back down. 

“A shower,” Harry replies, breath hitching, “and coffee, and some food.”

“Charmer,” Niall says lazily, his head dropping down. Harry wonders if Niall can feel his heart, like the drums unplugged at sound check, the beat stronger than the sound. “'M starting to go crazy cooped up in the house.” He kisses Harry’s chest, mouths at it. “Can we go out for a bit? Just down the street if that’s all we can do.” 

Harry nods. “Yeah. Actually. Um. We could like, climb over the fence, walk along the river,” he says, reaching for Niall’s stomach, the band of his underpants. “My dad’s got the skis. 'S too bad. But like, we’ve got, you know, wellies.” 

Niall stops and sits up straight, his underpants still pulled open because Harry’s holding on. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get in the shower.”

“Together?”

“Mm.” Niall gets up, holds out a hand for him to take. “Not done it before, have we?” 

They walk into the spray, Niall behind him, one hand on his hip, closing the glass door behind them. “Your mum made this really nice, didn’t she,” he says. “There’s a seat and everything.”

“Yeah,” Harry smiles. He turns on the side jets, closes his eyes to the water running down his face. “It’s amazing,” he adds, holding his head down so he can still talk without getting water in his mouth. 

“Like it’s made for looking at you.”

Harry giggles, wiping his hand over his face. “We’re meant to be showering, Niall,” he says through the water and the steam, trying to sound scandalised but failing miserably.

Niall trails a hand down his nape, parting his hair so it falls over his shoulders, and puts his mouth there. “I forgot this,” he says. “How you feel all wet like this. Being in water with you. How your skin smells when it’s getting washed over.”

“When did you feel me all wet?” Harry asks, but it feels like it’s his own skin that wants the answer. 

“When we went swimming in that hotel pool in Miami.” 

“Niall, that was years ago.” He can feel Niall’s hair like a soft cloth pressed against his back, like Niall has laid his head down but he’s restless about it. “Niall, we were using the pool in LA all the time. Like, a few weeks ago. And this summer.”

“Not together, no.”

“Really?” Harry laughs, moving Niall’s hand from his hip to his chest, kissing the fingertips. “I think you’re wrong.”

“Oh?” Niall hugs Harry’s stomach with his other arm, their bodies sliding together. “Why’s that?” he asks, lips brushing the back of Harry’s ear. “What do you remember?”

#

“Don’t walk out naked,” Niall says, poking his head into the bedroom, his beanie already on.

Harry stops towelling his hair. “Wh—”

“Robin’s back.”

“No fucking way!”

He dresses fast as he can and runs out. 

“Robin!” He slides down the banister. 

“Harry, please don’t—”

He’s caught short by the drop. It’s not as gentle as he’s used to and there’s a Christmas bow hanging at the end. “Oops.”

“Honestly, Harry,” Niall says, helping him straighten up.

Harry bats Niall’s hand away. “You’re back!” he says to Robin and lopes down the hallway to him. “How?”

“Shared a car, well, it ended up being two cars, actually, with some people from Penzance,” Robin says. “Took us all day and night, but I’m here now.”

Harry crushes him into a hug. A wet hug. “Why are you all soggy?” he asks, stepping back.

Robin laughs. He sounds exhausted. “Had to be out in the storm pushing the first car we used, slipped and fell flat on my arse. I think if I don’t get out of these clothes soon and into a hot bath, I might catch my death.”

“I’ll run it for you.”

“It’s all right, Haz. I can do it myself. No offense but you almost boiled my nuts off the last time,” Robin says. Harry can hear Niall behind him trying not to laugh. “Niall said your mum and Gem are out. D’you think you can get them on the phone for me? Tell them I’m here? Mine died somewhere before Birmingham.”

“I’ll do it right now,” Harry tells him. 

Robin disappears into kitchen, probably to go to the laundry room. It’s one of the first things Harry learned about him. Wet clothes straight in the washer, dress shoes straight on the rack.

“I think she left her phone. I saw it in the kitchen,” Niall says. “She probably didn’t have time to charge it this morning.”

“Gem might’ve taken hers. She could be charging it right now,” he switches to his sister’s number and dials. “It’s going to voicemail,” he updates Niall, and leaves a quick message. His phone is only up to 62% and who knows if the power will go out again.

“We can walk there, can’t we? 'S what they did.” 

Harry thinks about where the care home is, realises he doesn’t really know, and tells Niall to do a google search. It’s not far, just by the church green, and if they follow the river path, they only have to walk down a couple of streets before they get to it.

“Yeah. Let’s get them.” He toes off his slippers, exchanging them for his green wellies. “Mum will like, kick herself if she spends all day there and Robin’s here.”

“Alright,” Niall says, putting his borrowed wellies on. 

“Robin, we’re going—” He lowers his voice when he realises Robin is back in the hallway, out of his wet clothes and in one of his mum’s dirty t-shirts and a pair of boxers. “Mum’s phone is here and we don’t know about Gem’s so we’re gonna go get them.” 

“H, don’t bother. I’ll go after my bath.”

“No,” Harry insists. “They’ll want to know you’re here.” He turns to Niall, partly to avoid seeing the way Robin is looking at him. “We’ll climb the fence so we don’t have to walk through the neighbourhood.”

“Works for me.”

“There’s food in the kitchen, Rob,” Harry says. “Be back as soon as we can.” 

“Bath first.” Robin turns for the stairwell, but he comes back and puts his arm around Harry’s shoulder, swaying him with the force of it. “I’m glad I’m home,” Robin tells him. Harry properly blushes. “Thank you, Harry. Niall.” 

“Okay,” Harry says, wiggling away, catching the mesmerised look in Niall’s eyes as he’s looking at them both. “See you later!” He grabs his coat and things. “Come on, Niall. Back door.”

#

The air is crisp and his jeans feel cool over his thermals, but Harry knows it’ll only take a few minutes of walking before he’s warm again. They go around the mounds of mucked up snow from the impromptu photo session in the back garden, Niall pointing out the different holes their bodies made, and walk down the slope to the riverside.

Harry heads for the oak tree he’s used before to avoid having to step on the fence’s curlicues in case he slips and lands in the hedge. The lowest branch makes a nice ramp all the way to the top bar. 

“Oh, I was wondering where Anne got all that holly from.”

He looks over, sees Niall’s gloved hand touching the berries on the hedge. “Yeah. Loads more here if you have more Christmas crackers to hide.”

“I don’t know how to decorate tables! And the leaves are prickly as fuck.” 

“I know.”

“You wouldn’t want this around little kids,” Niall adds. 

Harry wonders what goes through his mind sometimes, how it leaps from one thing to another, how it connects all of them together. “It wasn’t around when we were growing up,” Harry explains. “She wanted like, a prickly hedge to stop people from poking their cameras through the fence. Bonus Christmas decorations.” 

“Right,” Niall says, and the wistfulness in his eyes disappear just as fast as it appeared. “So, how we gonna climb over this fence? The—”

“This tree,” Harry tells him, pointing to the snow-laden branch. “We swing up here and walk up. Grab the fence and swing over.” 

Niall laughs. “This is gonna be hilarious.”

Harry looks around for something to poke the snow off, but he can’t find anything other than more snow. “Let me go first,” he says, turning around. “I’ve done this before without all the—”

Niall is already up on the branch, clumps of snow falling down from where he’s brushing them off.

“Okay.” Harry feels a little thwarted. “I guess you know how to climb trees.”

“Nothing anyone else doesn’t. You just find a way up, don’t you? Hard to do it in wellies, though.” 

He follows, pulling himself up onto the branch, hoping his coat doesn’t snag on anything when he gets on, slipping left and right on the wide branch because his ankles can’t do very much. Niall was making an understatement. It’s bloody hard climbing trees in wellies. 

Niall is crouching along the branch, keeping himself low. His arse looks really good, Harry wants to tell him.

“Your arse looks really good, Niall.” 

“Harry,” Niall freezes. “Don’t touch it. If you touch it, I swear …”

The snow is shin deep, two ribbons of white framing the glassy dark river. They walk slowly eastward, toward the bridge that will let them out into the village a few miles down. 

After agreeing on where they’re headed, the walk is a quiet one. Niall points out a couple of squirrels, Harry takes a couple of photos of frozen drops of water on otherwise naked shrubs, they both take one of a clump of moss peeking through all the white. 

The path is narrow in some places, crowded by trees that grew too large and branches that are hanging low because they’re carrying so much snow. 

Harry shoves his hands deeper into his coat pockets, gripping the lining tight. Everything feels like it’s back to normal, but that’s why he’s asking: “You’re really not with her, then?”

“Nope.”

“Is she alright?” Harry ducks to keep from grazing a couple of snow-heavy branches, stays low until he’s cleared the tree. “She’s a good person. You really like her. I—”

“It's bad timing, is what I told her,” Niall says. When Harry stops to look back at him, he shrugs. “It's the truth.” 

Harry starts walking again. The thought that their late-night ice cream run in New York last year was the start of him getting to have Niall now makes his heart judder. He could've settled for what room service could get them. He could've listened when he was told winter wasn't when you ate ice cream. They could've not kissed after Niall ate the last of the cereal milk double cone from that shop in the Village. They could’ve not gone back to it after Nadine, after whatshername, after tour got hellish and everyone got hurt. 

“It might not be,” Harry finds himself saying when they’re side by side. “I mean, it might not be bad timing after a while.”

“Harry.”

“I could be alright with it. Like, if you want to be with her.”

“Not this again. Come on,” Niall snaps. “If I’m meant to forget about you and me, we can stop talking about it right now.”

“No. I just think, like, we don’t know, do we? We’re meant to be finding our own way this break,” Harry explains, tugging Niall’s arm to stop him from speeding up and away. “But it doesn’t matter who we’re with, does it? Or what we do.” He sniffs. “If we’re still us, Niall.”

“Not even a full six months in LA and you’re changing your mind,” Niall says. “Or did you hit six when you were over there?” 

Harry rolls his eyes. “Shut up.”

"Or did you meet someone else?"

“Shut UP, Niall,” Harry elbows him hard, but not so hard they'd be in danger of going in the river. It does make them stop, though, what with Niall having to right himself and Harry grabbing him by the arm and shoulder to make sure he’s successful. “Sorry,” he says. He lets Niall go and turns away to cough. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

Niall’s hand on his waist turns him back round again. “Harry, you said it’s not you, doing what we talked about. If it’s not you, don’t. Don’t say it’s alright if it isn’t,” Niall says, his eyes fiercely blue. “I'll go by you. Always. Hope you know that.”

“I'll always go by you too,” Harry says, holding Niall’s gaze, wanting to nose at him, take the hard line of his mouth away. 

He offers his hand instead. 

Niall raises his own and pulls it back down again as if he’s caught himself. He looks around and quirks an eyebrow when Harry doesn’t put his hand away. 

“It’s fine,” Harry insists. “All the houses aren’t close enough along here. We’ll see if anyone's coming.”

Niall nods, putting his hand in Harry’s. But he also reaches up with the other and sinks it into Harry’s coat, drawing him down into a kiss, a promise sealed, tight as a beat. 

They walk, hop and trudge on, the snow deeper and shallower in places, the drifts fewer than he thought there would be. They go past the bend where Harry had his first snog, which he shows to Niall. And past another bend, which might actually be the place where Harry had his first snog.

Niall is telling him he should get his story straight, before two girls write a tell-all each claiming the same thing, when Harry suddenly has a thought. “Niall, if we go by each other, doesn't that mean if like, one of us gets lost, we’ll both get lost?”

"That's what the kitchen shears are for," Niall says, not missing a beat.

"And the records."

"And the records," Niall echoes.

Harry laces their fingers together and starts them on another round of Christmas songs because Boxing Day counts no matter what some people might think. Niall refuses to sing _Do They Know It’s Christmas?_ even though it’s sort of one of theirs cos they did Band Aid one year. Harry tells him that means they have to sing _Fairytale of New York_ twice or they’ll run out of ones they know the lyrics to. 

“When have you heard me say no to that song?” Niall says, in perfect imitation of Bobby.

Harry laughs and ducks his head at the thought of Niall asking him the same question years down the road, the two of them old men.

The river is scribbling past, the snow glistening on its banks. He points to the church spire in the distance, to the weathervane cockerel with his plumage clear.

The sun is out.

~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I am [fromward](http://fromward.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to say hi or talk fic over there.


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